Revolution in pictures

Here, from Stapleton’s Civilizing Chengdu is Yang Wei, Chinese Revolutionary, in prison, November 25, 1911. Below is a picture of Yang as superintendent of police in March 1912. I use both of these in class when talking about 1911, but I am posting the top one here because it is such a striking picture. It’s obviously posed, as most pictures had to be back then, and Yang clearly has a sense of himself as the dramatic revolutionary that is lacking from every other picture of the 1911 crowd I can think of. Is anyone aware of anything else like this from the period? Any guesses as to what the others in the shot are there for?

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1 Comment

On the photography, I’m not sure that pictures had to be posed as carefully by 1911 as they had been thirty or forty years earlier. The film-based Brownie was invented in 1900, and mass market 35mm cameras were rapidly approaching.

Not that I’m saying the first picture isn’t a pose — clearly it is, on Yang Wei’s part. But the other people in the frame don’t have to have been posing per se to be part of the scene.